An enterprise tape library apparatus with a plurality of tape drives is a data storage device that provide sequential storage of objects comprising items of data on different magnetic tapes. When a request for one of the objects is received, the corresponding magnetic tape must be identified, loaded on one of the tape drives and physically wound to read the object in the enterprise tape library apparatus. The tape drives have a very slow average seek times so proper scheduling of read access is essential to overcome the drawbacks with this type of storage. Unfortunately, current techniques for scheduling requests for read access of objects is often inefficient and slow and often are limited to a single storage media.